New tones. Russian military expert retreats.

Three months after the start of the war in Ukraine, a former civilian officer of the Russian military issued a pathetic statement. Now it is significantly different.

He surprised many with a surprisingly pessimistic war forecast on Russian state television – now a military expert Michael Soderjonok Publicly retreated. The 68-year-old told the “60 Minutes” show on Wednesday evening that it was “the biggest exaggeration” to believe that the Ukrainians could launch a counter-attack.

Khodaryonok said on Monday that this time the political talk show, entitled “Achievements of the Russian Air and Space Forces”, was almost three months after the start of the war, when the Ukrainian armed forces were far from disintegrating.

A week later it looks very different: a former Russian civil servant now aims to further target the Russian military, explaining: “The basis for this is that the implementation of these plans will undoubtedly surprise the Ukrainian side in the future.” Host Olga Skabeva, who repeatedly interrupted Soderjonok on the last show, let this time end several minutes without interruption.

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Koderjonok recently stressed his strong desire to fight Ukrainian soldiers and their re-arming by the West, insisting that Russia’s armed forces are now deliberately finding and destroying foreign weapons. “Soon there will only be memories of American howitzers,” he said. The authors later displayed these words again in the column as a large quote board.

Russian state television shows are considered the Kremlin’s mouthpiece. Critical comments are largely removed from the public. The relatively new law carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for “misinformation” about Russia’s armed forces.

Earlier this week, many onlookers were shocked to hear Khodaryonok speak about the “information pacifists” in the Russian media about the war in Ukraine, saying “the whole world is against us.”